Pixie. Possible Jigglypuff.
Stewie is a terrifying ray of sunshine, living in Black Rock, CT with her waifu Mark, giggle goblin baby, and 3 cats. She works at ReedPOP spreading magic and whimsy to Comic Cons globally. She is not above chasing a doggo 2 blocks for them good head pats. She loves to play dress up, and is fueled by coffee.

Tag: nightbot

This post was inspired by several posts I saw on my pal Lori‘s blog as well as time spent in Anna‘s stream last night!

Greetings, fearless readers! I come bearing posts, since I’ve been sorely neglecting the blog for my new boyfriend, Twitch. I was introduced to my new drug of choice by my evil husband, Ryskill, who has severely underestimated just how addictive this new social network is. Yes, I have bumped it above Twitter (just by a little bit) as my favorite place to be. Now, I turn there for social interaction before anywhere else, and have absolutely LOVED the people I’ve met and the adventures I’ve had. I’ve met amazing people, including BergerBytes (Follow him!!) as well as a few other amazing streamers, far too numerous too name.

To encourage other fellow iggles and geek girl bloggers to join in on the Twitch phenomenon, I figured I could make a few Twitch 101 posts detailing some of the finer points of streaming. Today I’ll go through step by step how you can set up song requests for your viewers, using Nightbot. You can use Nightbot for a lot of cool things, including custom emotes, custom commands, timed alerts, giveaways and the ever wonky spam protection. I can go into these in later posts, but today I’ll be talking specifically about song request.

One reason Twitch is so great is because it’s in real time, and it’s interactive. Not only do the streamers (the good ones anyway) interact with their chat room, but they find other fun ways to include their viewers. One fantastic way to include your viewers in your show is through song request. It’s a great way for the streamer to learn about awesome new music, and for the audience to have a part in the broadcast. Let’s get going, shall we?

Logging in. Pretty important. Nightbot.tv uses OAuth to log you in, so make sure you’re logged into Twitch and you should be able to login with 1 click. If not, just enter your Twitch credentials.

You’ll need your new pal Nightbot to join your channel, and you’ll need to set him to mod status. You can do this by typing “/mod nightbot” in your chat. You’ll be able to check if Nightbot is in your channel by refreshing your Twitch page and checking your viewer list to see who is in your chat room.

Next, make sure you enable your song request to work. Do this by finding Song Requests in the left column, then clicking Manage Song Requests. Make sure to click Songs On to enable song request to work.

Make sure to open the AutoDJ panel in a new window, and keep it open while you stream. You can use this as a kind of command center for your music. You can change the volume, pause songs, or even skip crappy ones (though that might irk the viewer who requested it.) Your viewers will now have complete control over any music they want to request, be it a YouTube video or a SoundCloud song.

If necessary, you can restrict the type of user who can request songs. For example, if you only want your mods to be able to request songs, you can do so by using the commands found on this page. Using Nightbot, you’re actually able to create lists of “regulars” (as in regular viewers) in your channel. So theoretically, so you could go so far as to create a list of viewers that you trust, and restrict song request access to only those viewers. It all depends on how your channel functions, or how many misbehaving viewers you tend to have.

Now the fun begins! Make sure your viewers, regular and new, know how to use song request, and what sort of restrictions you have on it. List the commands for them. This way they can join in on the fun. It’s up to you to try to set up your guidelines for music (if you have any), but if you would prefer people to submit only clean versions of songs, for example, make sure to outline this in your panels.

Just a heads up, Twitch has a music algorithm type of thing that will mute parts of past broadcasts if it detects copyrighted music. So if you play music and Twitch picks up on it, they may mute part of the broadcast – not DURING your stream, but afterwards in your past broadcasts. This means it will be silent, which would be bad if you want to use it for a highlight. However with Song Request, you can play the music quietly enough (in the background) that it may not be able to pick up on it over the sounds of the game and you talking.

You can have a lot of fun with song request, so get to it! Last night in my friend Anna‘s stream, I spent a good hour requesting only Disney songs. So pick a theme, or a band, or music related to the game you’re playing, and let your viewers have fun on the jukebox!!